


Being a Not-So-Boring Kind of Guy

by Aliada



Category: The Legend of Barney Thomson (2015)
Genre: Drama, Gen, Hilarity, after all he's a boring kind of guy, and feelings, but not too many of them, or not?, post-murder thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-13
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2019-05-21 20:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14922284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliada/pseuds/Aliada
Summary: He didn’t need to be some boring, nice guy. He could be his own guy who chose boredom one moment and something else entirely the next. It was just the way life worked. And what was even more wonderful, now it worked for him as well.





	Being a Not-So-Boring Kind of Guy

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. They are the property of their creators. No infringement intended.
> 
> 'The Legend of Barney Thomson' is definitely on top of my favorite Robert Carlyle movies. Absurd, hilarious, dramatic, with well-rounded, entertaining characters - I never knew I needed it until I became aware of its existence. I was smitten, to say the least. And this is a small tribute to those unexpectedly deep feelings that kept me awake at night - or should I say 'nights'? :D

He was a killer. Now, it shouldn’t be that surprising, seeing as his mother’s hobby was cutting off and labeling body parts. Oh, and you shouldn’t of course forget the sending part. Sending must have been a delightful experience. It is always nice to get a good big pack of something. Only in this case, something was meant to terrify you out of your mind or even send you into a panic attack. Sending provoked sending, after all.

Still, seeing as his mother wasn’t an ordinary woman, she gave no damn about that. Unfortunately, Barney did, and very much so.

He’d wake up at night and picture their faces, their cries, probably even their wet pants, but Barney had yet to reach his lowest, so he tried not to think about that. Still, he had a feeling that his lowest wasn’t going to be late. Not in this damn universe. All the other good things were always late. In fact, he could just be honest and call them what they really were - non-existent.

You would think it all started with scissors in his hand. But not really. It started with indifference.

Brief, nasty flickers that managed to pull through the net of ‘socially acceptable’. ‘Acceptable’ has always been his religion. His guide to the _proper behavior_. His key to the peace. And he really valued his peace - or so he thought. Doubts weren’t nice things. They brought trouble. But at first they brought dissatisfaction. His perfectly normal, predictable life that used to be so _normal_ turned into hell in a matter of days. It was like he was looking at himself through the lopsided glass. He started noticing things. He started looking into people’s eyes. He started listening to the meaning behind their words. And that wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all.

If he were to be asked who was the first, he’d not have the answer. ‘All of them’ described it just right.

For instance, there was Chris who never apologized for his long, meaningless phone calls, and when he did, his eyes looked empty, and his voice sounded even emptier, as if his thoughts were still occupied with one of his ‘immediate concerns’. When Barney didn’t look at him and didn’t register the tone of his voice, it almost seemed okay. But when he did, bad things happened.

He didn’t get mad right away, it usually took a few of those meaningless looks, and voices, to shatter his calm, but once it was shattered, he couldn’t seem to stop. Everyone who knew Barney would say that he wasn’t an adrenaline junkie kind of guy. Hell, he would say so himself. He liked his peace. He liked his quiet, boring moments when no one touched him and he could do his job in silence or have a long, nice chill.  

So why was his heart pounding so fast and his limbs growing so strong? Aye, it sounded like a passage from his mother’s, putting it mildly, shitty books, but nothing was closer to the truth. He felt intoxicated by that crazy rush and yet, it was feeding him the way nothing had before, not even his favorite chips. Ironically enough, it was Charlie’s favorite dish as well. And he was going out to get it on the night of that unfortunate incident.

Charlie. Charlie has always been the type of guy Barney liked. Polite. Accurate. Attentive, but not too attentive. Always listening, but not listening too closely. Speaking in his turn. Keeping his timing good and nice. Charlie has been an easy kind of guy, and Barney liked it. Until he didn’t.

It’d be a lie if Barney said that he didn’t think of killing Charlie. Of course he did. The strangling impulse should’ve been enough of a warning sign, if anything.

Barney thought that he liked quiet, not too bright things, but talking about murder like you would about weather? That was pretty much sick even by his standards. Wullie was a person after all. Maybe not a very good one, which, in truth, wasn’t for Barney to decide, but a living and breathing one for sure. Well, living and breathing stopped right after Barney thrust scissors in his chest, but that didn’t give Charlie the right to make dirty assumptions about the bags. Chemicals made for a much nicer story, and Barney thought that Charlie, being a nice person, would agree. But apparently, ‘nice’ meant different things to them. In the end, Charlie wasn’t even a good person. A good person would go and confess the stuff to the police. But no, Charlie was somewhere in between, as Barney once was, and it was one pointless existence, if he had anything to say about it.

He still didn’t enjoy killing things, he wasn’t his crazy mother after all. He didn’t even think that he _had_ to do it, or it was the right thing to do. It was neither. What it _was_ is the way out. He wasn’t in that in-between space anymore. He finally was something. He was a killer. He was someone who had his very own cop breathing down his neck. He was someone who made this cop go nuts. Barney didn’t really remember how many of them were there (must be the stress talking) but the fact was, they killed each other over him. No one has ever as much as _thought_ about him for more than two seconds, just enough to call him a ‘haunted tree’ or worse. No one has ever been so happy to be right about him. That cop might have been chocking on his own blood in his last moments, but he was satisfied, and he let Barney know that. He was satisfied to having caught _him_. It was a dream come true, even more so that he could still be that nice, quiet guy on the surface.

He got his hit, and plenty of it, but Barney knew that too many hits could spoil the pleasure, and he didn’t want to spoil anything, not when he’d finally found what he was looking for so long. He didn’t need to be some boring, nice guy. He could be his own guy who chose boredom one moment and something else entirely the next. It was just the way life worked. And what was even more wonderful, now it worked for him as well.

 


End file.
